Category: Editorials

The Treasury Board is currently reviewing why a dozen federal agencies and departments are ignoring a federal policy by not paying some of their interns. According to the CBC, the Treasury Board of Canada must ensure interns accepted for federal positions are paid, unless an academic program or co-op placement forbids the intern from receiving payment. The list of federal organizations employing unpaid interns includes the Canadian Space Agency, the Depatrment of National Defence, and Public Safety Canada, among several others. Unpaid internships are unacceptable. These organizations should be paying their interns, especially since they represent the federal government. Many students are already struggling with student debt, while some students are also balancing part-time work. If you add a full-time, […]

This year, Haven Books is providing a five per cent discount to students who buy their textbooks at the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA)-run bookstore before Sept. 1. This is a good initiative to cut back on the exorbitant cost of textbooks and to encourage students to shop local. However, many students will be unable to take advantage of this discount because many professors have not yet provided the syllabi for their courses. Many students will not know what textbooks they need to buy until they receive their syllabi in the first week of classes. Additionally, the course descriptions provided when signing up for classes are often vague and sometimes don’t reflect the course material. As a result, some students have […]

Carleton will restart consultations on its sexual assault policy with students and on-campus groups during the Fall semester. This is after work on the policy was “paused” over the summer and the consultant in charge of talks between the university and stakeholders resigned because groups could not agree. In particular, groups disagreed over the term “rape culture” being used. With the chance to start again, Carleton should be consulting as broad a cross-section of the student body as possible. The sexual assault policy is too important to get wrong and affects the entire student population. Holding consultation meetings is a good step but only the loudest voices will be heard. Despite the importance of the policy, not everyone has the […]

Despite the fact the student vote was one of the deciding factors of the 2015 Canadian election, parties are not putting enough effort into keeping this group of new voters interested in politics between elections. Political parties could and should do more to address the student vote if they want to be successful. Even though young Liberal, Conservative, NDP and Communist clubs are run on campus to get students interested and involved in the political process, most students are not “card carrying” political supporters. More can be done to court the mass influx of voters aged 18-24, whose turn out went from approximately 38 percent in 2011 to approximately 57 percent in 2015 according to Elections Canada. This previously untapped […]

Carleton’s recent decision to change the name of the School of Canadian Studies to the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies is a welcome one, but the change shouldn’t be one in name only. It has limited meaning and significance unless it comes alongside a commitment to genuinely including Indigenous voices, knowledges and worldviews within any academic domain that covers Canadian history and culture. It’s impossible to have a deep understanding of Canada without a knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of the same land, just as it is impossible to understand First Nations, Inuit and Metis life without telling the story of colonialism. The relationship between Canada and the Indigenous peoples has too often been presented as one-sided, downplayed entirely […]